John R. Miles

that you could talk to about these struggles and these impossible situations you sometimes find yourself in where you see a revenue source that's going to dry up and you know you need to switch, but you're struggling with like, how do you make this pivot without creating a disaster by your decisions and bouncing ideas?

So it's great that you had that forum.

It's something I always wish I could have had.

Walter, I want to go back to your 50th birthday now.

So on my 50th birthday, which wasn't too long ago, unfortunately, it happened to be during COVID.

So this big 50th celebration that I was hoping to have and put on a party and everything was never able to occur.

But

My wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, did something pretty remarkable for me.

She went out to a whole bunch of people who I didn't know she was doing this and had them each create short videos for me about how I had influenced their lives.

And to this day, it's one of the most valuable things that's ever happened to me because I never realized up until that point how much

I mattered to them or made a difference to them and their lives.

You kind of did this the opposite way.

It's just a tremendous thing for people to hear because I think it's something we fail to do so much of the time.

And I found in my own life, I have had very few, very close friends.

And as I look at things, I've had a lot of people who I would consider to be more acquaintances than when I think of a really close friend who is something that you can tell pretty much anything to and you don't have to worry about them anymore.

not wanting to associate with you or not be willing to go deep.

Unfortunately for me, three of the people I have been closest to have all now passed away for different reasons.

And once those people do leave you, it's very difficult to get that relationship back, especially if you've known these people for decades.

Well, unfortunately, Walter, I lost those people before I was even 50.

So one of them died and we were both in our late thirties from colon cancer.